http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1314799...

A 1995 novel of the near future which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award (and I think also the BSFA). It's a pessimistic take on the post-nanotech future, particularly convincing on the relationship between high-tech computing and low-tech field combat in a very recognisable near-future Albania (yep, I've stayed in that hotel too).

I thought the settings were very convincing if rather gloomy - 1994-95 saw the height of the Bosnian conflict, and from that perspective McAuley's Balkans, mired in conflict for decades, would have seemed entirely plausible. Unfortunately I couldn't quite bring myself to care much about the characters, but I did admire the scenery. ( )

This is an interesting book. I am wondering how to describe a dis-jointed, reality-skewed futuristic trip through Europe in a way that does it justice.

Alex Sharkey is a child of the late twentieth century bumbling through life on the edge of legality. The consequences of his choices lead him to search through Europe for Fairyland. A home for the modified "dolls" - fairies. Split into three parts the flow of the book is interrupted by the introduction of new characters and their relationship with the fairies. It does all come together in the end but in some ways reads like three novellas linked by a theme . At times I wondered whether it was worth reading. The long descriptions of psychoactive viruses and gene modification were complex and outside my comfort zone for reading, but I loved the story; the quest and the characters we meet.

Well worth reading. ( )

It's always a risky business writing about 'our world a little way into the future'. For all its originality and accolades, 2001: A Space Odyssey, for instance, was terrible at this. In other cases, the picture isn't 'right' but it still works - for example with John Brunner' Shockwave Rider, based on the predictions of Alvin Toffler's classic non-fiction futurology Future Shock.
What's striking about the dystopian, drug-ridden future of Paul McAuley's Fairyland is that it is still as stunning today as it was when it was written back in 1995. What is also remarkable is that, even though it is a fairly dark and dismal story - and the 'hero' Alex Sharkey is not exactly the most appealing of characters - it remains an enjoyable and entertaining read. It's dark without being depressing.
McAuley makes superb use of extensions of biological concepts, from viruses and nanostructures designed to modify our sensations and beliefs to manufactured sub-human creatures called dolls that are subverted by a genetically enhanced little girl to become the hypnotically strange fairies. For a lot of the book Sharkey is driven by a geas, desperately searching for the girl who captivated him so many years before (perhaps the urge is chemically induced - he isn't sure and doesn't care).
The book is divided into three sections - the second and third aren't quite as satisfying as the first, in that the book would probably benefited from a single point of view, and we stray more later on. It's also fair to say that some of the concepts later on, involving a pair of human beings being mentally absorbed into the internet are a bit confusing. Even so there's huge fascination in the way McAuley spins the storyline and the book piles on superb original ideas on future ways we could misuse our minds and bodies.
As far as I can see this book is out of print (though plenty of copies are available from Amazon Marketplace using the link) - this is a crime. It's a true classic. ( )

(Alistair) Well, this is probably the second oddest book on my booklog pile as of right now.

Let's see, now: in a near-future run-down dystopia (which, alas, included one of my personal Must Throw Book At Wall near-future dystopia traits within, oh, 25 pages of the beginning), bionanotech runs amuck, people are parasitized by meme-carrying viruses and personality-altering "fembots" - which would be nanites except for a throwaway line concerning someone holding the trademark on the word for non-nanoscale machines, and a current pet fad is for bright blue, sterile, vaguely hairless-ape-like "dolls", run by crude personality chips...

...until one artificially bright little girl introduces these two themes to each other, starting a revolution of personality among the "dolls", and kicking off a tremendously entangled and frankly surrealistic plot as the consequences of this, and of the "dolls" modeling themselves on an array of fairyland archetypes (hence the title) play themselves out.

Technically, I think it's a good book - and it kept me reading it, although it didn't really succeed in making me care much about the characters, with one minor-character exception - but I didn't care for it much, on the whole. But then, that's because the world portrayed is essentially a Crapsack World dystopia, and frankly, I think I'm losing my taste for Crapsack World dystopias these days.

( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/ce... ) ( )

Before he met the brilliant, hypnotic child Milena, Alex Sharkey had never played with "dolls"--blue-skinned, gengineered lifeforms designed for work, amusement, or destruction. But the underground gene-hacker is seduced by a megalomaniacal little girl's dream of providing the soulless genetic constructs with free thought and a future-and he unwittingly unleashes a plague of madness on the world. Now there's a void in his life and memory that must be refilled, but it means pursuing the dangerous sentient species he helped sire from the ruins of a Magic Kingdom through a wasted Europe. It is Alex Sharkey's last chance and the last hope remaining for a once-dominant human race.